


Day by Day

by Sholio



Category: Saga (Comics)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 12:43:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3692769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Book 3/issue #18, Gwendolyn and Sophie start putting the pieces back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day by Day

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this a little while back, but never posted it; I'd just binge-read the first four books, but #25 and #26 weren't out yet (though it doesn't seem to have been Jossed). 
> 
> I was thinking about how uncomfortable things must have been on The Will's ship in those very early days post-stabbing, when Gwendolyn, Sophie, and Lying Cat were all trying to figure out how to get along without the person who was the reason why they were all on that ship in the first place. Also, I am a sucker for domesticity, even on (or maybe ESPECIALLY on) a spaceship.

When she realized that she was on her own with a small child, as soon as things had calmed down enough to actually think about anything other than imminent death (her own or someone else's), Gwendolyn went into the tiny bathroom of The Will's ship, jammed her fist in her mouth, and had a quiet freakout.

Luckily, as small children went, Sophie was definitely a child on the Easy Mode setting. She was very quiet and seemed capable of feeding both herself and Lying Cat, which was good, because Gwendolyn consistently forgot to do it. Though she did occasionally hear the tiny voice in her head saying "Slave girls know how to cook all sorts of things!" and feel a rush of guilt wash through her. It was immensely useful that Sophie's reaction to being hungry was to quietly skulk into the ship's kitchen and open a can or a freeze-dried pack of something, but it probably wasn't healthy for a six-year-old to have developed the skills and initiative to do it. Gwendolyn was pretty sure that at the age of six, all she'd been doing was playing screen games and finding excuses to duck out of beginning magic practice.

Lying Cat had accepted Sophie's tearful conveyance of The Will's final orders. She had to; she knew the girl wasn't lying, about either his instructions or not having intended to stab him in the first place. But her earlier warmth towards Sophie had faded into a sort of ambivalent wariness. Gwendolyn suspected that Lying Cat was, in her own way, grieving, but she often had a look that made Gwendolyn want to keep an eye on her. She'd never been fond of Gwendolyn ever since the whole "accidentally spacing her" issue (and, okay, it wasn't like Gwendolyn couldn't understand that) but she was even touchier and more vicious than usual these days.

As for Sophie, she distrusted Gwendolyn, was being kept at claw's length by the cat, and was currently sunk in a dark pit of misery. She also seemed to believe Gwendolyn was lying to her about not being able to help The Will.

"You do magic. There has to be magic to fix him."

"Magic isn't like that, Sophie. There are rules. It's not --" _Not magic,_ she almost said, and buried her face in her hands for a moment. "It has rules, Sophie, it just does," she said between her fingers. "There are things you can and can't do."

Which still didn't stop her from querying every library and university on Wreath that she could finagle access to. She set up searches running on the ship's computer for every health and healing-related keyword that she could think of, and pored over texts from her homeworld until her eyes ached. If nothing turned up on Wreath, they'd have to cast their net farther afield, but she thought it was best to begin with the magic tradition she was familiar with before venturing into the strange tangle of folklore and superstition that constituted foreign magic.

Sophie, it turned out, could read, at a higher level than Gwendolyn had expected from a six-year-old. Since Gwendolyn could read Blue without needing her translation pendant, she looped it around Sophie's thin neck and left her to it.

For a couple of weeks, that was all they did. Gwendolyn found a quiet backwater moon to plunk the ship on -- after very carefully checking records for any alerts regarding local wildlife -- and they lived off the ship's stores and Lying Cat's hunting. Each sunk in her own unique blend of obsession, depression, and guilt, they barely spoke. None of them lived on anything like a normal schedule. They slept when they wanted to, ate when they were hungry, and spent most of their time buried in the computer.

And then came a day when Gwendolyn woke to rain drumming on the ship's skin, realized she couldn't remember the last time she'd had a shower, and thought, _This is stupid. We're alive. What happened to The Will is wrong and unfair, and we damn well owe it to him to fix it if we can, but we're alive and that's worth something, isn't it?_

She padded outside in the rain, clothes and all. When she dripped back inside, she shed her wet clothes and -- not without a slight twinge -- changed into a much-too-big T-shirt and sweat pants from the ship's small closet. The T-shirt was the last clean one. Sophie had gone through all the others. Apparently her slave-girl training did not extend to doing laundry.

At the moment Sophie was curled up, asleep, in a chair in front of screens displaying Blue text. Lying Cat was wound around the base of the chair. Gwendolyn gazed down at the girl, who was barefoot and clad in one of the T-shirts she'd taken to using for a dress. _She needs proper clothing,_ Gwendolyn thought. _I need more than one change of clothes. Shopping trip, soon._

In the meantime she poked through the ship's stores. She was hungry, but weary to death of freeze-dried meals or the local fauna's dark, strong-tasting meat. Besides, they were mostly out of food -- another reason why they needed to stop by some planet that had actual _stores_ sooner rather than later. She was tired enough that it took her awhile to figure out why the labels on everything looked like gibberish. Right. Pendant.

She teased it over Sophie's head as carefully as possible, but Sophie still woke up and sat up, rubbing her eyes.

"Sorry, kid."

"'salright," Sophie murmured, eyes downcast.

"Hey, none of that." Gwendolyn went back to her investigations of the compartments. There must be _some_ variety here. "Are you hungry? Want breakfast?"

"Mmm." Sophie trailed her hand over the side of the chair. Lying Cat raised her head to bump it. Apparently they were getting along again. Gwendolyn was surprised by the sudden, painful feeling of exclusion.

 _You never really WERE a part of this, you know._ Lying Cat was The Will's partner; Sophie was his particular project. But it hurt to think it. She'd helped rescue Sophie, after all. She wasn't _just_ the vengeful ex who showed up in the middle of their lives and then passed through.

Her fingers brushed the back of the compartment and came up with a block of something colorful. Her first thought was _O Narrative Tropes, not another box of that horrible plasticky cereal._ Sophie had gone through that in the first couple of days. But it wasn't. It was, in fact, a pack of stasis-sealed cookie dough.

"Sophie," she said, brandishing it. "Do you want cookies for breakfast?"

Sophie hunched into herself, in that particular way she had. "I'm not allowed cookies unless I'm good, Miss Gwendolyn."

"You have been good," Gwendolyn said firmly. "Am I lying?"

Lying Cat raised her head, and a small flutter of a purr or a growl ran through her vocal cords.

"See, Lying Cat says it's all right."

Sophie uncurled slowly from her huddled ball. She looked like she was trying to find a loophole in this logic, but. Cookies.

The cooking facilities in the ship were surprisingly decent, at least in the sense that there was a stove, which even had an oven. So far Gwendolyn had been making do with heating pre-packed meals, but it _was_ possible to cook. She sensed Sophie's hand in the neatly washed and put-away dishes; she had a vague recollection that when The Will was (-- _alive_ , said her brain) -- running things, there had been dirty dishes scattered about. Now everything was tucked away neatly. Sophie pulled herself up onto the countertop with a quick, practiced motion, opened a cabinet, and pulled out something that looked like a functional cookie sheet.

Gwendolyn frowned at the instructions on the package. "Preheat oven ..." She looked down at Sophie, who had already turned the oven on. "Do you know how to do this?"

"Yes, Miss Gwendolyn."

"Well, then." Gwendolyn put the cookie dough on the countertop. "You should do it. I'm going to go take a proper shower, because my hair is drying into a ball of frizz."

Her hair was still a ball of frizz even after using the shower, since hair care products of any sort had not, for obvious reasons, been high on The Will's shopping list. The bathroom's shelves contained soap, shaving supplies, and a bottle of pet shampoo -- and little else. Gwendolyn resigned herself to looking like a poodle for a little while and climbed back into the T-shirt and pants. The shirt, she couldn't help noticing, even though it had been clean when she put it on, smelled a little like him.

_Girl, you've got it bad._

She padded barefoot down the stairs into the ship's main living area. The whole place smelled richly of baking cookies. Sophie was sitting crosslegged on the floor, feeding cookies to Lying Cat with one hand while eating them herself with the other. As soon as Gwendolyn appeared, quiet as she thought she was, they both looked up with nearly identical guilty expressions.

Gwendolyn laughed. She couldn't help it. It had been much too long since she'd wanted to laugh.

Sophie looked like she wasn't sure what expression was supposed to be on her face, but slowly and cautiously, a smile peeked out. "Here," she said, holding out the last cookie on the plate. "There's more in the oven."

Gwendolyn accepted it for the peace offering it was, and sprawled in the chair Sophie had vacated. She ate the cookie and ignored Lying Cat's beseeching look. "Are cookies bad for cats?" she asked.

"Honest Cat says not."

Gwendolyn decided not to interrogate that too closely. "After breakfast, I'm thinking maybe we'll pack up and head out to someplace that has a mall. Would you like some nice dresses, Sophie?"

"Slave girls aren't supposed to --"

"Sophie," she interrupted. "You're not a slave girl anymore. You're a proper member of this .... crew, and you should have something proper to wear. You can pick out anything you want."

Sophie thought about it. Gave a tiny, shy nod. Then, as if that was all the honesty she could bear at one time, she turned to nestle into Lying Cat and buried her face in the cat's wrinkled side.

Gwendolyn got up to get the cookies out of the oven. She had to step over Lying Cat's tail, and the cat, uncharacteristically, didn't even hiss at her. 

Outside the rain was still falling, streaking the ship's windows. It wasn't home, but there was something weirdly homelike about it.

They could do this. One day at a time, they could do it.

**Author's Note:**

> [Fanfic tumblr](http://sholiofic.tumblr.com) \- [regular tumblr](http://laylainalaska.tumblr.com) \- [DW blog](http://sholio.dreamwidth.org)


End file.
